Branding, Individual Subscriptions & Tweaks

Getting ready for some markets and shows and working on the small but beautiful brand that is doughies. Listening to a talk by Seth Goodwin last night about how to think small to go big, got me thinking about what is the doughies brand? Previously I’d written down the founding principles of doughies here, but as our narrative continues its good to sit back and think about the shape of doughies – like what do we stand for? And what is the change we are trying to make in the world? It comes down to this:-

a) Doughies wants to make good sourdough bread. And share it. Period. Bread filled with local provenance, and devoid of commercial food chain links – a small beautiful micro food loop.

b) Doughies want to share how we make sourdough bread, so you can make sourdough bread yourself.

c) Constantly better our craft to improve (a) and (b)

Individual Bread Club

So how do you change the world one loaf at a time? We’ve been stocking the local deli every Saturday now for the last 2 months, and I hope that some of y’all have gone and bagged a loaf of local sourdough. This is set to continue, and hoping to add some more local shops shortly, but we’ve also starting getting enquiries about loaves for individuals, which is something we’d like to start – a sourdough breadclub.

The plan would be to recruit a dozen local individuals (and their families) to subscribe to weekly bread – either picked up at the bakehouse, deli, or dropped off if you’re already on our delivery route. If your local, and interested, drop us a line or come see us at one of our upcoming events.

Tweaks – Bakehouse and Sourdough – Bettering Our craft

Our prover (left)

Our two sinks (utensils – big, hands – small)

The dough table, ingredients and tools over, flour store under

Mixer (bench top), Rofco oven (under bench)

Wire shelving for baskets, loaves – dough crates up top

Some doughies branding…

Here’s the end result, lots of local provenance sourdough bread

Crust

New method of scaling

New sourdough couche clothes

Just some random pictures above, showing the small (tiny!) bakehouse where it all happens, and some micro improvements (tweaks) we’ve been making as per item c above – constantly bettering our craft… 🙂

We’ve started to add flour to water; not water to flour in hobart the mixer – with the mixer getting maxed out at 12kg of dough, there was a tendancy for a scrape of flour on the bottom to go un-mixed. Water first has cured the problem, and now we’re consistently getting a good mix.

Tiny thing – but changed the way we organise the table for dividing; now half upend a dough crate far left, and as it spills out onto the bench its divided, scaled, air folded and thrown to the far right. This lets us table up to 24kg of dough, ready for final shaping into baskets, with the addition of a temporary shaping work top on our big utensil sink.

A slice of a monster loaf…..2kg of sourdough….

We’ve been working on a large monster loaf – inspired by the large Panatones of France, and closer to home the mighty 10kg Pagnota of Aston’s Bakehouse; being a larger loaf, it keeps really well, feeding a family for the guts of a week.Ours is currently 2kg dough, about 1.8kg loaf weight, baked long and slow for a deep well developed crust. This is the kind of thing you can expect on our individual subscription programme.

That’s all for now breadheads – but good to get some of those thoughts into the ether. Thanks for lending me your time, and sharing in our story.